Archive for
November, 2008

I took one of my kids to a birthday party last night. As the dutiful dad, I collected again some time after midnight.

I pulled up outside the venue to see the usual gaggles of teenagers, some more drunk than others, hanging around in little groups & starting to make their way home, or elsewhere.

It was pretty cold & a little damp, nevertheless, I saw at least 3 girls who could no longer walk in their heels and were carrying them. One of them couldn’t bare to walk along the rough path & headed for the nearest grass verge, doubtless to get a little bit of frostbite from the freezing wet conditions, if not aÃ‚Â piece of dog crap or two nicely mingled between the toes.

Their biggest mistake, these girls, was to do it here & not in Torbay, where the local Old Bill would have swooped down in their public order transits & handed out a complimentary set of flip-flops. Yes, police are part of a Ã‚Â£30,000 campaign to give out flip flops to drunken female revelers so they can get home safely after a night of booze & clubbing.

Of course, the local senior officers are putting a different aspect on the scheme.

Superintendent Chris Singer said: “It’s not simply so that people can get home in comfort. It gives us the opportunity for us to talk to these young people and get over safety messages to them. We’re making sure we take every opportunity to engage with people and talk to them about keeping themselves safe.” (Note: You can’t talk to people these days; you have engage with them.)

Hmmm, so you can’t just stand outside a nightclub & tell people to ‘be safe’ you have to spend Ã‚Â£30,000 & come up with some hair-brained scheme to get some publicity & some tea & medals on the chief constable’s lawn?

I’d have thought by the time that vulnerable girls pour themselves half-cut onto the streets at 3 in the morning, it’s a bit late to be handing out safety advice. I’m not sure what flip flops are going to do to protect females. From memory most of the women in casualty in the early hours are either suffering from wounds inflicted by males they know, have been sexually assaulted in some way or are comatose through alcohol abuse. I don’t recall seeing that many who have suffered a footwear related calamity.

Perhaps they’re supposed to beat a prospective attacker around the head with the flat end of a pink flip-flop, the attacker could also read the helpful crime prevention message on the flip-flop just before it takes his eye out, “don’t attack women!”, two birds with one stone, and all that.

It kind of harks back to yesterday’s post about nobody willing to take responsibility for their own actions. Perhaps a better use of Ã‚Â£30,000 might be for the police to invest in loudhailers & get them to drive round the estates reminding girls to wear their own sensible shoes before they leave home for the alcohol parlours.

How many times a week do you think this country has gone down the pan? Where did it all go wrong?

Well if you agree that things have gone wrong then probably two or 3 decades ago & it’s been sliding ever downwards since.

The country is full of people who take responsibility for nothing. Life is so meaningless that babies are killed or left to die by parents who’d rather spend their time taking drugs or playing on their X-Boxes. In such a blameless society we see people blaming everything on someone or something else.

People live next door to each other for years but do not even know their neighbours’ names, much less ever talk to them. Self is the new god; nobody else matters, and if you can enhance your own situation by using other people’s money, all the better.

All this is no accident. It happened when someone decided it was wrong to criticise people. Suddenly, we all had the right for anything & everything. If you weren’t able to conceive, no problem, you have the right to a child. Not in a stable relationship? Who cares, you have the right to have kids & as many as you can manage, can’t afford them? no worries, everyone else will pay? Can’t bring them up? same applies. There is now no shame.

This was supported by government policy which made it easier to have fragmented, failed families, and , by the way, don’t even think of criticising what would eventually lead to the breakdown of the family. Inconvenient truths about how bad a child’s chances were in a single-parent ‘family’ were – and are – brushed under the carpet because it is wrong to make moral judgments on others.

The social engineers were at work.

We reap what we sow & the results of 30 years of social engineering are a society where responsibility & discipline are consigned to the history books. The ill-educated, abandoned & ignored children of the 70s & 80s are now popping sprogs with no chance other than to become what their parents already are, only worse.

Those who can see through the mire & strive to do their best to bring up stable, sensible, educated & loved children are penalised by tax systems which encourage single parents or mothers to return to work & thus leave a job half done. It’s no coincidence that there are more single parents than ever before & it is often financially beneficial to actually be divorced rather than stay as a family unit.

Social & personal responsibility has been sacrificed at the altar of political correctness. It is somehow more ‘right’ to place an abandoned child with a lesbian couple than with a mother & father who ‘don’t agree’ with homosexuality. Religious beliefs of some trump the religious beliefs of others, but only if they are a ‘minority’.

Free speech is only free if you agree with the prevailing powers. Victim status is there to be had but only if you are in a minority ‘diverse’ group. Running the country is about banning things. Got a perceived problem? Easy, ban something. And while you’re at it create a surveillance society that any 1960s eastern Bloc country could only dream of. Make the masses fear something like, oh terrorism and they will surrender all their rights.

I could go on, and on…

The progressive thinkers & political indoctrinators have changed society from a modern, caring & loving society into one more fit for the middle-ages.

If you read any of the police blogs for any time you’re bound to come across a post criticising sentencing guidelines.

Well, here’s another one.

Tanya French, isn’t a name which immediately springs to mind when thinking about the outrages of the past few years, but she should. She & her boyfriend, Alan Webster were convicted of raping a twelve-week old baby in 2006. French assaulted the baby while her boyfriend filmed it on video while they babysat for the child in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

French was sentenced to five years but was released a couple of days ago having served just 30 months. There was criticism at the time of the original sentencing as the trial judge gave Webster a six-year sentence, this was later increased to 8 years by the court of appeal.

French is said to be living in a ‘safe house’ which presumably means the tax-payer pays for her satellite TV,Ã‚Â X-box & alcohol.

There’s a new group of Facebook about her, presumably set up by some people from Hatfield, it’s called KEEP TANYA FRENCH AWAY FROM HATFIELD!! & currently has 573 members who are equally appalled by her early release. Kirsty, who may be the Bard of Hatfield & appears to be a white female, judging by her Facebook pic, sums it up: “them fukin sick cunts should be rottin in a fukin shit hole bein eaten alive by wat eva da fuk lives dere. i hope one day to see her in da street cos id rip dat sick cunts head off and paraid it round hatfield on a fukin stick. wat da fuk has happen to justice for dat poor helpless little girl.dis country really is fuked up….“

One effect of serving my time & getting older is my ability to hold alcohol. I can’t do it these days. I should really know better & despite the warnings ringing in my ear from Mrs Weeks as I leave the house not to try to keep up with the younger ones on the shift, after a few pints I can’t remember what day it is let alone what my wife told me 3 hours earlier.

Another of the rats left the drowning shift this week, off to pastures new in a different department. We ended up in one of these bars that I would not normally be seen dead in. Mirrors everywhere, a bar in the middle of the room so they can serve from all angles, & full of people my children’s age. I was forced to try to blot out all this younger living with copious amounts of Kronenberg 1664. It did the trick.

Not like years ago. I used to live in police accommodation, the police bar was 3 minutes walk. If we weren’t on earlies we were down there most nights. Young, free & single with nothing to spend my money on. And fit enough to work the beer-induced fat off. I once woke up on a beach in France after one particularly heavy night down the police bar.

I suppose I should be thankful that with age my liking of & ability to consume alcohol is diminishing, but I wish I could remember this when the rest of the shift drag me out for the night. (thank God for rest days & carpeted toilet floors!)

Perhaps as I journey towards a grumpy old man I’m finding more in common with the Mail than I used to. I see the occasional copy at work, if I can concentrate during the wee small hours between the occasional PNC check, I read whatever is available. This usually amounts to the Sun, Mirror, Mail & Express. I don;’ know what it is about people who work in control rooms but why doesn’t anyone read the Telegraph & Times, it would make me feel so much more intellectual.

Anyway, back to the Mail, it does come up with stories with which I have some broad agreement.

The woman was later advised to avoid the area in future if she didn’t want to stumble across naked men pleasuring each other on a public footpath.

The local police in Preston seem to be giving out mixed messages. Whilst a local senior officer said behaviour like this in public would not be tolerated, their Assistant Chief Constable, Mike Cunningham, has recently advised police to turn a blind eye to cottaging & dogging. Mr C is the ACPO lead on lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender issues. He believes that attending reports of illegal public sex alienates the gay community. Probably similar to arresting bank robbers alienates the criminal fraternity.

I can confirm that prior to Mr Cunningham’s official report into the matter, we were being advised in the control room that any reports of homosexual activity in public should not be dealt with by the sending of a police officer, but should be passed to the local team ‘for their information & development’ which may include getting local officers to patrol the area, putting up lighting or CCTV to ‘discourage’ such activity. And there was me thinking management teams were intent on easy arrests to get their figures up for morning prayers every day.

I’ve said this before & I’ll be saying it again – there are times when I wish the police would stick to savings lives, & preventing & detecting crime.

I’ve noticed recently that I’ve been a little bit more ratty at home. My patience quotient seems to have gone down a bit. When I stopped to think about it I wondered whether I was a bit more stressed. The only reason I can think of is because of the big changes coming.

As the 200 weeks approaches almost single figures there is an almost doom-laden air that something is coming to an end.

I was chatting with someone who isn’t in the job last week. Every time I see him he asks how long I’ve got to go & invariably the phrase ‘not long now’ enters into the conversation. He asked me whether I got any preparation for entering ‘civvy street’ & the answer is ‘not a lot’.

I did do a resettlement course quite some time ago, and to be honest, I don’t recall too much about it other than there were a few people from financial institutions ready to advise me where to invest my commutation, there was a little bit about applying for a job but this was more the sort of jobs you might consider applying for rather than how to write a great CV & how to recognise what skills as a police officer are transferable to other roles.

I’ve said for about 30 years that being a police officer isn’t like any other job. As a person you’re not usually defined by the job you have. This is not the case when you’re ‘in the job’; you are defined as a police officer. When people talk about you they don’t usually say, this is John, he’s an electrician. But being a police officer is usually in the introductory paragraph, if not the first sentence.

When you’re a police officer you are one 24 hours a day, it affects everything you can or can’t do. It’s an umbrella which is forever above your head rain or shine. You’re in an exclusive club. Your friends are police officers. Much of your social life is spent amongst police officers.

I think it wil be a big step when I leave the club. Hopefully, despite my current mood swings, this will be like stepping out into a fresh, new & sunny world.

It’s really no wonder the rest of the world see Britain as a soft touch, not when they see things like this.

Two Iraqis accused of murdering two British prisoners of war have been granted thousands of pounds in legal aid to fight being tried in their own country for a crime committed in their own country, of Iraq.

In 2003, Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth & Sapper Luke Allsopp were in a convoy which was ambushed by Fedayeen militiamen in southern Iraq. The soldiers were captured & taken to an Iraqi intelligence based where they were shot. Pictures of the soldiers as they lay dying in a compound surrounded by a mob were shown an al-Jazeera.

Faisal Al-Saadoon, 56, & Khalaf Mufdhi, 58, are being represented in Iraq by British lawyer, Phil Shiner who works for Public Immunity Lawyers. He says the accused would not get a fair trial in Iraq & could face the death penalty. A judicial review is to take place, funded by my good self & all the other UK tax-payers which will investigate the claim that trying the killers in Iraq would breach their human rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s a long time since I did geography but back when I was at school Iraq wasn’t part of Europe. It’ll also be the same Human Rights which the soldiers had to proper medical treatment after their capture & the right not to be executed. But people like Mr Shiner, don’t give a fuck about that when they can earn lots of tax-payer’s money to defend scum.

Perhaps the Royal Military Police should have just shot the ‘enemy’ in the back of the head when they captured them & it would have saved us all a lot of money, instead of treating them under the rule of law & respecting their human rights.

If you commit a crime in your own country & there is a death penalty & a high chance you’ll get that penalty, don’t come crying to me, & you can fund your defence out of whatever system exists in your country, which sounds like a decent & fair addition to our foreign policy.

So the evil racism exhibited by some components of the BNP has been repaid in kind by evil racism of some Asians, Blacks & others.

We’ve been fielding calls since the publication of the BNP membership list from people on that list who have kindly been phoned at home by the anti-BNP rabble offering to tell them their fortunes.

Most of the fortune telling has been in the form of advising these people, quite a few of whom are no longer members, that their houses are going to be burned down, their wives are going to be raped & a gang of heavies is right now, waiting outside with baseball bats & machetes.

On at least one occasion, a completely ‘innocent’ teenage child of a BNP has been told their father will be killed as soon as he leaves the house. One of the factors running through the many calls we’ve had is that the callers usually rang many times & often spoke with Asian or Afro-Caribbean accents. (although there were apparent white thugs calling too)

It amazes me how this bunch of evil vigilantes can criticise people who have racist views & in the same breath threaten to rape, kill & torch their houses. Can they not see the hypocrisy?

Fighting racism is a thing for education & the mind. Using the baseball bat & petrol bomb merely increases the divide & solves nothing. To my mind they are far worse than the people on a membership list somewhere.

It’s taken under 24 hours for a force to suspend an officer for alleged membership of the BNP. In 2004 ACPO decided to ban police officers from membership of the British National Party, citing that it would be bad for race relations for a police officer to be such a member.

So it has been prohibited to be a member of a perfectly legal political party. My understanding is that this has never been challenged in court. I guess those who would benefit from such a challenge don’t want to lose their jobs to make a political point. I don’t know much about human rights, to be fair, in most cases I think the Human Rights Act does nothing to protect those who need protecting. But I would love to see this ban challenged in court. If I turn up for work, treat everyone fairly & don’t break any laws who is anyone to tell me what I should think or believe?

I have no desire to belong to the BNP but I bloody-well demand the right should I so choose.

It’s interesting that the ACPO policy is basically an issue of morality (since it is not one of illegality). Compare this with the illegal publishing of people’s names & addresses (Theft of the document & Data Protection Act) and ACPO actively encouraging forces to go & look at an illegal document to find out if any of its officers are on the list. And they say integrity is non-negotiable?

Examples of corruption amongst freemasons are legion. How many examples are there of masons using their position to grease the slippery promotion pole, or to get away with the odd offence or indiscretion here or there, or allow friends to do the same. Incompatible with being a police officer? Certainly. I’ve not heard of any calls for police membership of the masons to be outlawed. Funny, that.

The sooner ACPO & the legislators gets back to policing & lays off social engineering, the better this country will be.

A Freedom of Information application showed that police cars set offÃ‚Â speed cameras 107,000 times in the last year, but only 150 police officers received tickets. *

Sarah Fatica from the road safety charity “Brake” said the figures were “incredibly worrying“. I’d agree, very worrying for victims of violent crime that there is a call for police vehicles to slow down & stick to the limits.

Last week we had a job where a lady on her own had been woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a door opening. She dialled 999. I sent all 3 cars available to me & a couple of traffic cars also made their way. Every single one of them went through 1 set of speed cameras & 3 of them went through 2. That’s 11 of those 107,000 activations.

They went on aÃ‚Â silent approach just in case whoever had opened the lady’s door was still in the area; we didn’t really want him/them to hear us coming from 2 miles away at 3 in the morning.

The first car which arrived on the scene drove past a VW Golf which was wheel-spinning out of the lady’s street in the opposite direction. The second car which arrived turned just as the Golf was driving past & was able to neatly slot in behind it. Within 3 minutes both traffic cars were behind the Golf, which refused to stop, they all went back through the speed cameras the other way.

To cut a long story short, we followed the Golf until it turned into a cul-de-sac & they 3 male occupants tried to run off. Two were caught by the car & another was chased down by PC Speedy about 200 yards down the road.

They’d burgled 3 houses in 3 different towns & had property from 2 of them still in the car.

By my reckoning we activated the speed cameras maybe 24 times on that one incident & it only lasted 7 or 8 minutes.

I really don’t think many police drivers are driving around at high speed for the fun of it; in our force, if you go through a speed camera, it better be documented on a current log or you can expect a ticket. I sometimes get very frustrated during an incident when I’m trying to direct resources, or pass & receive information when some officer who isn’t really at the sharp end of the job calls up to have it documented that although he’s still 5 miles from the scene, he’s just gone through a speed camera in the next town. But I understand why they do it, they’re arse-covering so they don’t get a ticket.

I think I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I wonder what everyone’s reaction would be if we drove everywhere at 30mph. We’d not catch as many people, prevent fewer injuries & deaths, but at least it would keep the Daily Mirror off our backs.

* mind you, the Mirror can’t seem to get it’s figures correct, in an article in August 2008, it said that in 2006 the police set off the cameras 900,000 times. I’d have thought a reduction of nearly 800,000 in just 2 years would be applauded. But I expect, being the Mirror, that neither figure is actually correct.

They decided that in order to stamp out passport fraud, the answer would be to arrange for people applying for a passport to have face-to-face interviews. 216,581 applicants have attended these sessions up until July 2008.

The cost of introducing the scheme helped to raise the cost of a passport from Ã‚Â£42 to Ã‚Â£72 in 2005. The bil for the interviews has been some Ã‚Â£96million & the monthly running costs are Ã‚Â£2.5million, so that makes about 115million of our lovely English pounds.

Fortunately, this has all been money well spent; not a single case of fraudulent applications has been uncovered as a result of applicants having an interview and none of the 216,000 people had their applications rejected.

Regular readers will know of my disdain in certain compensation claims where you can get a squillion pounds for hurt feelings & Ã‚Â£2.50 for having your legs blown off.

The MOD has just paid out Ã‚Â£2.4million to a Kosovan man who was accidentally shot in the face by a British soldier.

Six men were driving round a British-guarded building in Pristina in 1999, firing guns in the air to celebrate a national holiday.

A group of paratroopers, fearing they were under fire & in danger, opened fire on the jeep killing 2 occupants & wounding Mohamed Bici. He was subsequently flown to the UK & treated on the NHS. He was then granted legal aid to sue the MOD in a British court. He won Ã‚Â£346,000 legal costs & Ã‚Â£2,054,000 cash. The paratroopers were found innocent of any wrong-doing at an enquiry.

Royal Marine, Mark Ormerod was offered Ã‚Â£214,000 when he lost both legs & an arm after being blown up.

A similar injury to Mr Bici’s would earn just Ã‚Â£11,000 compensation should it happen to one of our servicemen.

Tick-boxes, targets & graphs. No, not the modern police force this time but Haringay Council’s Child Protection Department.

I didn’t expect the senior executive to apologise regarding the death of Baby-P, after all, nobody in authority apologises for anything because an apology can be construed as an admission of guilt, but it was very interesting to see the little graphs & charts presented by Sharon Shoesmith to learn how good her department is despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

I had a case of ‘been there, done that’ on reading ex-Haringay social worker, Nevres Kermal’s story in the paper today.

This is a social worker who claims she tried to blow the whistle on Haringay’s social services department’s woeful practices in protecting children.

Ms Kermal claims she warned bosses & government ministers about poor practices in her department, but was ignored & subsequently targeted by those same bosses.

Complaints of being overworked & understaffed must ring bells in any public authority throughout the land these days. Money being mis-spent on team building trips abroad & tea parties for staff. Nothing new there.

Ms Kermal claims that when she brought matters to the attention of her managers they became hostile towards her. She says she outlined cases of neglect & abuse being ignored by social workers direct to Ms Shoesmith herself but was basically ignored.

She says as a direct result of her efforts to put matters right her managers instigated a series of trumped up charges against her resulting in her being investigated for an allegation of assaulting a teenager & further for being an unfit mother herself.

One could argue that these are merely the ramblings of a slighted worker who ended up being sacked by her department & is trying to get her own back. Given that there will now be 3 separate enquiries into the sad case of the death of Baby-P I guess time will reveal whether Ms Kermal speaks with forked tongue or not.

But I have seen similar situations within the police which clearly mirrors what Ms Kermal alleges to have happened at Haringay. Managers don’t like it when their boat is rocked. Rather than sort out the matters being brought to their attention, they take any criticism as a personal attack & do anything to get their retaliation in first. They can be particularly vindictive hen their little empire is under attack.

The thing is, I’ve never seen the Bill. Not once, ever. It occurred to me last night watching the BBC’s Children in Need. The cast of the Bill did a musical routine in the form of a tribute to the Blues Brothers – one of my favouritist filmsÃ‚Â with about the best car chase in movie history. Apparently, the Bill has been going for 25 years & I’ve not seen a single episode.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy police programmes, I used to watch Morse religiously. I still say the pinnacle of all TV cop shows was Hill Street Blues. It was truly cutting-edge in its time & sowed the seeds for all the great modern cops shows that came after it. NYPD Blue, Law & Order, CSI, etc can all trace their roots back to Hill Street Blues.

I saw an episode only last week on one of the cable channels. Fantastic, but dated. It’s one of the few tv programmes I’ve bought the soundtrack to. Mike Post, genius.

There were lots of Bill actors I recognised last night, sadly, none of which for being in the Bill (except that tall guy who has served almost as long in the fictional show as I have in real-life, can’t recall his name though). I’m sure I saw 2 ex-Eastenders, someone from Casualty & someone else from Waking the Dead.

I suppose the Bill is ingrained in the collective psyche of this country. I know a few years ago people would often ask me if being a copper was anything like the Bill. I always replied that I hadn’t a clue, but I bet whatever it is like it is a bloody site more exciting than real-life.

Welcome to any visitors from our farming community. I’m not sure where the link between farming & policing is but for some reason I’ve been recommended as a ‘website you really must see‘ overÃ‚Â at the British Farming Forum.

I expect that even farmers have some spare time to read other people’s blogs in between filling out all those European Free Money Grant application forms.

Talking about people visiting this site. I also had the good fortune to be listed at Stumble Upon last week. I have no idea what Stumble Upon is but it seems someone stumbled upon one of my posts & as a result I got double the amount of visitors than I normally do, always good for the old hit count. The thing is, the link on Stumbled upon wasn’t even one of my newer posts; it was from September 2007.

I suppose we should be grateful that we have blogs to visit, while we can. Since the police PSDs have only managed to close down some of the blogs, it’s only a matter of time before someone tells ISPs that they are no longer allowed to carry blogs deemed by somebody with power to be ‘unhelpful‘.

Doubtless any ban on blogging will be wrapped up in some kind of anti-terrorism, we’re doing it for your own good, kind of propaganda we are growing ever more used to these days.

Somebody commented on a recent post with a quote from Herman Goering: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

I don’t actually remember my first day in the job. I think it involved attending HQ & getting kitted out with uniform. I know we took the oath but I’m not sure if that was the first day or in the first few days.

Anyway, after a week or two we packed off to training school for ten weeks. Residential. I was never fitter in my life as when I came back from training school, I stayed at training school at the weekends whilst most people went home. We had nothing to do but sport & fitness work.

I do remember my first day at my designated police station. I was the total newb. I probably looked out of place because I was the smartest, the bull on the boots was still fresh & the creases on my shirt were unlike every one else on the shift. I was also the youngest.

I had such high expectations & ideals. Here I was a member of the most exclusive club in the world – so I was told – looking forward to doing my part to help, serve & protect.

My illusions were soon shattered as soon as I went for my first pee.

I pulled up at the urinal in the police station & the first thing I noticed was that there were bogeys on the wall and grafitti in black biro all over the place. I had to check I hadn’t stumbled into the pub across the road from the nick by mistake.

Graffiti & bogeys on the wall? At a police station? Done by Police officers? My disenchantment with being a police officer wasn’t to be negated over the next 30 years.

I love the Germans; they have great beer, they don’t cross the road until the little green man flashes & they have a wicked sense of humour.

Take the Chaos Computer Club.

It seems the Germans have the same concerns over the introduction of identity cards & storage of personal data as we do in the UK.

A hacker from the Computer Chaos Club has got their hands on the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schauble. The print came from a glass used by the minister at the opening of a religious studies department at the University of Humboldt in Berlin.

An image of the fingerprint has been printed in a copy of a German magazine “Der Datenschlueder”. In an ironic masterstroke the fingerprint has been printed in the magazine but also supplied on a flexible rubber film with partially dried glue which will leave an exact copy of the print, much the same as the real minister’s print. It can be slipped over a finger & used to leave fingerprints on doors, telephones & biometric readers.

An anonymous research student has allegedly used this technique to fool 20 different biometric readers including the same model as used by Germany’s passport office.

A British group No2ID, has announced that they have obtained Jacqui Spliff’s fingerprints from a glass she used at a Social Market Foundation event after it advertised a Ã‚Â£1,000 cash reward for the Home Secretary or Prime Minister’s prints.

If any of this is true it is a) very worrying that the government promises of the effectiveness of the ID card system appears to have been blown out the water before it’s even started and b) very funny.